Flying to Utila?

[CuriousRambler]

Some friends and I are trying to organize a vacation to Utila this summer, senior trip type thing. Anyway, prices are in our price range (i.e. you don't need money to survive ) but when I look up flights, they're over $1,000 from the local airport (FCA, Glacier Park Internat'l in Montana) to Tegucigulpa. I haven't looked at prices for flights in quite a long time, so that could be reasonable, but it seems a little pricey to me. Does anyone know of any cheaper ways to travel or anything? We're looking in June or July, maybe August, doesn't really matter...But it's gotta be cheap, or well cheaper than a grand each. Is traveling that expensive now?

Any tips from you well-traveled folks who know how to get the deals and survive would be greatly appreciated!

 

[whalerock]

Hi there,
try to get a cheap flight to Miami or Houston and from there to San Pedro Sula or La Ceiba, from there you get a flight to Utila. This are the but airports for flights to Honduras. You could also get in touch with the guys from Utila Dive Centre, info@utiladivecentre.com , they can advise you which airline to get.

 

[Damselfish]

The approach above sounds right, you may be able to do better by knowing the main gateway for a destination and looking at the parts of a trip separately, rather than counting on any single travel site to do the best job of it.

Unfortunately some of the least expensive destinations have expensive airfares, and vice versa. And some places that are cheap to get to for some people are expensive for others. When looking to save money you really have to look at the bottom line from where you are.

 

[CuriousRambler]

Well if I drive to Seattle and fly from there, the price drops dramatically, just around $500 to San Pedro Sula. Taking separate flights to Houston or Miami alone are the greater portion of that cost, and getting to Honduras from Miami or Houston then makes it more than just getting one ticket rather than separate for each leg.

What are the options to get to Utila from San Pedro Sula? La Ceiba was a little bit more to fly into, so that would probably be cheaper in the long run, but is there a train or anything you can catch between San Pedro Sula to La Ceiba, or a bus..Anything that might be cheaper than flying basically, and how much does it cost to get from La Ceiba to Utila and back? Everything I can find just says 'you can get a flight' or 'catch the ferry' without any prices.

How essential is the ability to speak spanish? A couple of my friends can, but most of us (myself included) don't know four words. Thanks for the dive shop's email, I'll definitely get in touch and see what they can give me for information. Hopefully this works out!

 

[stu_in_fl]

if you have Continental or Delta from where you are - they both fly into Roatan (not sure who else does) - roatans airport code is RTB - check on expedia.com or some site like that, then you can get a little puddle jumper (atlantic airlines) for $100 return from Roatan to Utila (contact roatancharters (http://www.roatan.com/ for the internal flight) ....if you go this way, there is less chance of loosing your bags....some people have more problems with bags getting delayed going via San Pedro and La Ceiba

 

[CuriousRambler]

Hmm..I just checked prices to Roatan and they're a bit higher. Where it would suck to have my baggage delayed/lost, I'm just a lowly teenager without a large sum of money, so I'll probably have to take the chances haha. I'll just have to pack all my dive gear into a carry on if I get/take it. Thanks for the heads up though, I wouldn't have even thought about baggage..Being that I'm in Montana, and there's basically nothing in montana..It's looking cheaper if I drive to Seattle, Washington to get a flight anywhere, and even from there it's pretty spendy..

 

[red_barbarian]

I just did a quick check, if you go from DEN to RTB on Taca it's $536 RT + tax if you go before June 15. I'm going to RTB in july and the routing isn't too much fun from Den. But if you want cheap....
If money is really tight, and time isn't you can take the bus/train most of the way and probably catch a ferry from mainland Honduras. I had friends that did that years ago when I was in college, they had a great time. If thats the way you want to try go to your local Barnes and Noble/Borders and look up the overland travel info in the Lonely Planet guides, take some paper and a pen with you and make notes, keeps the cost down. Sometimes the journey is as good as the destination w/ the right mindset.

 

[CuriousRambler]

I've been noticing that it's cheaper if I can go earlier. Unfortunately I have to be in town on June 21st for my graduation party since the entire family is coming form all across the country for it, and a friend recently asked me to attend her wedding on July 7th, so I'm thinking I may just need to wait until it gets closer to July and see if prices drop at all. I'll have to look into taking a bus, I mentioned driving or taking a bus but my friends all jumped on the chance to say no. Maybe if prices are good enough I can talk them into it.

 

[Humuhumunukunukuapua'a]

You could do a good shore-diving location like Kona or Bonaire and save some money that way. Utila is just one of the more expensive places in terms of travel cost. Given that, it's not that cheap a vacation when you factor everything in.

Usually you can get to Coz pretty cheaply, but then you do have to pay for boat diving ($30-40 per tank).

Or what about Roatan? Saves you the extra flight to Utila.

Getting to Bahamas can be pretty cheap. I don't know about the costs of diving though.

Anyway, some thoughts. Have fun!

 

[CuriousRambler]

I'll look around at other places, I've got to admit that I saw the cheap prices of being there and pretty much dropped my search. Depending when we get out of here though, we'll probably stay for at least three weeks, most of us will have to be back to go back to school or college, etc. - so there is a limit to it, but we'll most likely be staying as long as we can squeeze by, so cheap accomodations and living cost in general is higher up on the list than comfort and most other things heh.

After looking around, I'm considering getting a couple specialties while I'm down there (or wherever we end up..) depending on what I haven't earned yet at home and pricing. I was really amazed to see $20 per tank for boat dives in Utila...Admittedly I'm not exactly well-versed in the prices of charters, but that seemed pretty reasonable to me, especially since all I've seen is the $120 to dive Molokini from Maui with two tanks. $200 for ten tanks definitely beats that deal!